How a $7m advertising campaign saved a fortune

Julian Lee Marketing Editor

IF EVER there was proof that advertising - or rather the threat of it - works then this is it.

In the first month of its campaign attacking the government's planned resource super profits tax the mining industry spent at least $7 million on buying TV and radio air time and placing advertisements in newspapers, outspending the government by about two to one. And every cent tax deductible.

Eleven television commercials commissioned by just one organisation, the Minerals Council of Australia, were played 1011 times across free-to-air TV an average of 33 times a day, according to research commissioned by the Herald.

In contrast, the government's ads defending and explaining its tax began a week later, on June 6, before ceasing abruptly last Thursday when the truce between the two was called.

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The calculations on advertising spending are based on figures up to June 13.

The government television commercials aired 413 times in that period, according to the advertising monitoring service Xtreme Information Services.

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''In 30 years of advertising I've never seen anything like it,'' the head of the media agency PHD, Barry O'Brien, said.

He said the fact that about $90 million remained in the miners' war chest played a part. ''They haven't put the gun back in the holster and they have a lot of credit [air time] left with the networks ready to go any time.''

Yesterday, after an outlay of $250,000 a day - give or take a few thousand a day paid to its public relations and lobbying firms, and the cost of producing the ads - the miners got their payback. The value of the two biggest mining companies, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, rose $600 million and $1.2 billion respectively on news of the breakthrough in talks.

Putting aside the sheer volume, advertising experts said the miners won because their ads worked better and because they struck first.

The strategy director of the ad agency BWM, Jamie Mackay, said the miners tried to appeal to every Australian, and using a rugged male lead character helped sell the message that this was a tax that would affect everyone.

''To me that had more empathy and spoke to me in an adult way,'' Mr Mackay said. ''Whereas the government ads did what government's do: they preached to me like an adult to a child.''

An executive of the Sydney ad agency George Patterson Y&R, Julian Watt, said the miners' ads were a counterpoint to the government's. ''Setting the record straight if you will,'' he said. ''It also helped them being on air first as it forced the government to respond with what ended up as a rather bland message.''

That the government spent taxpayer dollars to fight its corner backfired, he said. ''There's so much negative media around how much taxpayers money has gone to putting that on air.''